a revolution
Integrating movement into classroom lessons is the latest revolution for schools that are increasingly filled with sedentary and overweight children. The Federal Centers for Disease Control says the number of children who are overweight has more than doubled since 1980, and among adolescents, the rates have more than tripled.
That’s led to increased illness among the nation’s youth. Just 10 years ago, Type 2 diabetes was virtually unknown in children and adolescents. In fact, it was commonly referred to as “adult onset diabetes.” Today, Type 2 accounts for almost 50 percent of new cases of pediatric diabetes in some communities.
Julian Reed, an assistant professor in health and exercise science at Furman University, said he became interested in childhood obesity while studying for his doctorate. He found numerous scientific studies supporting movement for greater physical and mental improvement.
“The beauty of this thing is two-fold,” he said. “It’s not only increasing movement time for kids to intervene in obesity, but it also enhances knowledge retention and brain changes.”
Reed has taught two graduate-level classes and a handful of workshops to Greenville County elementary school teachers. While other school districts have done the same thing, they’ve focused on PE teachers. “We are doing movement with classroom teachers,” he said. “We’re using movement to teach language arts, using movement to teach math, using movement to teach science.
“It’s not just movement for movement’s sake; it’s using movement as a way of enhancing and putting into context these different disciplines. It’s awesome.”
The response from teachers like [Rachel] Parris is overwhelmingly positive. Teachers have concrete evidence — improved grades and fewer discipline problems — after implementing specific movement skills in their classes, Reed said.
how it works
Keeping class fresh is a constant challenge for teachers. “Sometimes you feel half of the kids are with you and half are zoned out,” said Parris, a third-year teacher. But after taking Reed’s class and learning how to work movement into her lessons, she observed that “my lower-achieving kids, their reading has gone up.”
In a typical school day she’ll incorporate a movement game into her lessons at least once. She also uses at least three “Brain Gym” exercises — a series of 30- to 60-second exercises designed to develop neural connections in the brain — as transitions between lessons.
“They’re cross-hemisphere, so that they’re working both the right-side and the left side of the brain,” she said about Brain Gym. “The kids love them and they can do more afterward. I’ll have kids ask about them: ‘Can we do another Brain Gym?’ It’s cute.”
greenville county buys in
Elementary school students in Greenville County get just one 45-minute physical education class a week. Many health and government guidelines call for a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise a day.
So any extra movement, whether in an after-school sports or recreation program or as part of daily classwork is welcomed. Brenda Mays, consultant for health and physical education for the school district, said she’d been looking at ways to increase activity for the district’s youngest children.
“You have to get kids at ages 3, 4 and 5 years old moving so you can prevent the risk of inactivity and obesity,” she said. “The idea is to create a group of kids who don’t have to be ‘fixed’ later.”
Mays pays for district teachers to take Reed’s classes and workshops, and she’s been amazed by the response from teachers. “It didn’t take any selling. They were ready,” she said. “I sent out an e-mail about a workshop and it filled up within 24 hours. And I had more than 100 people on the waiting list. It’s just caught on like wildfire.”
Catherine Dillon, the ESOL program lead teacher for the school district, took Reed’s graduate class figuring additional movement in the classroom would simply burn more calories for her students. What amazed her was the educational impact.
“The successes they’ve had, just from implementing simple activities is amazing,” she said. “It never occurred to me before taking the class that you can get a person to learn much more easily doing a relay race than in a lecture.”
heartbeats
When she taught her first-graders how to take their own pulses, Parris said they were fascinated about feeling their hearts beat beneath their chins. She turned that into a mini-science lesson.
Another morning, she taught spelling by having kids move their bodies to form letters, like a crowd at a ballpark singing and moving to the song “YMCA.” She demonstrates how the earth moves in a 24-hour rotation and how it revolves around the sun by having children pretend they are the Earth. They circle and spin around one student holding a flashlight — he’s the sun — in a partially darkened room.
When she did the math and realized statistics show that many of her first-graders — one in three — are likely to become overweight and get diabetes, heart disease and worse, she decided to do something to help.
“I like to think this is making a difference,” she said. “It would be awesome if I could prevent the kids in my class from ever getting diabetes.” Even better, she feels she’s become a better teacher as she sees her kids learn more quickly.
“The class I took just opened me up to tons of things you can do instead of just talking to students,” she said. “And as long as I’m covering my standards, my principal is cool with it. “As for me, I’m loving it.”
excerpts reprinted from The Greenville News, by Mike Foley, Staff Writer
published tuesday, march 28, 2006
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Integrating movement into classroom lessons is the latest revolution for schools that are increasingly filled with sedentary and overweight children. The Federal Centers for Disease Control says the number of children who are overweight has more than doubled since 1980, and among adolescents, the rates have more than tripled.
That’s led to increased illness among the nation’s youth. Just 10 years ago, Type 2 diabetes was virtually unknown in children and adolescents. In fact, it was commonly referred to as “adult onset diabetes.” Today, Type 2 accounts for almost 50 percent of new cases of pediatric diabetes in some communities.
Julian Reed, an assistant professor in health and exercise science at Furman University, said he became interested in childhood obesity while studying for his doctorate. He found numerous scientific studies supporting movement for greater physical and mental improvement.
“The beauty of this thing is two-fold,” he said. “It’s not only increasing movement time for kids to intervene in obesity, but it also enhances knowledge retention and brain changes.”
Reed has taught two graduate-level classes and a handful of workshops to Greenville County elementary school teachers. While other school districts have done the same thing, they’ve focused on PE teachers. “We are doing movement with classroom teachers,” he said. “We’re using movement to teach language arts, using movement to teach math, using movement to teach science.
“It’s not just movement for movement’s sake; it’s using movement as a way of enhancing and putting into context these different disciplines. It’s awesome.”
The response from teachers like [Rachel] Parris is overwhelmingly positive. Teachers have concrete evidence — improved grades and fewer discipline problems — after implementing specific movement skills in their classes, Reed said.
how it works
Keeping class fresh is a constant challenge for teachers. “Sometimes you feel half of the kids are with you and half are zoned out,” said Parris, a third-year teacher. But after taking Reed’s class and learning how to work movement into her lessons, she observed that “my lower-achieving kids, their reading has gone up.”
In a typical school day she’ll incorporate a movement game into her lessons at least once. She also uses at least three “Brain Gym” exercises — a series of 30- to 60-second exercises designed to develop neural connections in the brain — as transitions between lessons.
“They’re cross-hemisphere, so that they’re working both the right-side and the left side of the brain,” she said about Brain Gym. “The kids love them and they can do more afterward. I’ll have kids ask about them: ‘Can we do another Brain Gym?’ It’s cute.”
greenville county buys in
Elementary school students in Greenville County get just one 45-minute physical education class a week. Many health and government guidelines call for a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise a day.
So any extra movement, whether in an after-school sports or recreation program or as part of daily classwork is welcomed. Brenda Mays, consultant for health and physical education for the school district, said she’d been looking at ways to increase activity for the district’s youngest children.
“You have to get kids at ages 3, 4 and 5 years old moving so you can prevent the risk of inactivity and obesity,” she said. “The idea is to create a group of kids who don’t have to be ‘fixed’ later.”
Mays pays for district teachers to take Reed’s classes and workshops, and she’s been amazed by the response from teachers. “It didn’t take any selling. They were ready,” she said. “I sent out an e-mail about a workshop and it filled up within 24 hours. And I had more than 100 people on the waiting list. It’s just caught on like wildfire.”
Catherine Dillon, the ESOL program lead teacher for the school district, took Reed’s graduate class figuring additional movement in the classroom would simply burn more calories for her students. What amazed her was the educational impact.
“The successes they’ve had, just from implementing simple activities is amazing,” she said. “It never occurred to me before taking the class that you can get a person to learn much more easily doing a relay race than in a lecture.”
heartbeats
When she taught her first-graders how to take their own pulses, Parris said they were fascinated about feeling their hearts beat beneath their chins. She turned that into a mini-science lesson.
Another morning, she taught spelling by having kids move their bodies to form letters, like a crowd at a ballpark singing and moving to the song “YMCA.” She demonstrates how the earth moves in a 24-hour rotation and how it revolves around the sun by having children pretend they are the Earth. They circle and spin around one student holding a flashlight — he’s the sun — in a partially darkened room.
When she did the math and realized statistics show that many of her first-graders — one in three — are likely to become overweight and get diabetes, heart disease and worse, she decided to do something to help.
“I like to think this is making a difference,” she said. “It would be awesome if I could prevent the kids in my class from ever getting diabetes.” Even better, she feels she’s become a better teacher as she sees her kids learn more quickly.
“The class I took just opened me up to tons of things you can do instead of just talking to students,” she said. “And as long as I’m covering my standards, my principal is cool with it. “As for me, I’m loving it.”
excerpts reprinted from The Greenville News, by Mike Foley, Staff Writer
published tuesday, march 28, 2006
<< Return Back to the Article Home Page
